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Copy 1 ADDRESS BY 

^E^B. FULTON 

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BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THEj UNIVER- 
SITY OF MISSISSIPPI AT THE UNVEILING 
OF THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE WHO 
MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE IN THE 
GREAT WAR, AND AT THE SEMI- 
CENTENNIAL OF THE CLASS OF 1869 



JUNE 16, 1919 



While the manuscript of the following address was being 
printed, a sudden illness on May 29, 1919, brought to 
an abrupt termination the gentle life and noble work of 
Robert Burwell Fulton. 



1.1! 






ADDRESS BY R. B. FULTON BEFORE THE ALUMNI 
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI AT THE 
UNVEILING OF THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE 
WHO MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE IN 
THE GREAT WAR, AND AT THE SEMICEN- 
TENNIAL OF THE CLASS OF 1869. 

June 16, 1919. 

Mr. President, Fellow Members of the Alumni Society, 
Ladies and Gentlemen: 

This occasion might well serve me to open the storehouse 
of memory and give utterance to reminiscences and recitals 
of the most intimate and sacred character. Were I to yield 
too much to the inclination to dwell upon these and upon 
the memories that come to one who has spent half of his 
threescore and ten years amid these familiar scenes, in 
more or less intimate connection with the life and work of 
this venerable University, I fear I would tax your patience 
and place too great a strain upon my own emotions. My 
first endeavor is to pay worthy homage and honor to the 
memory of those of our brethren to whom this visible 
memorial is erected. 

The Latin poet, Horace, in pride and ecstasy over his 
own achievements as a writer of verse, uttered the classic 
exclamation, Exegi monumentum cere perennius — "I have 
reared a monument more enduring than bronze. " Accept- 
ance of this rather vainglorious claim of the Roman poet 
has given rise to a belief that spoken or written words are 
the most enduring human monimients. Spoken words 
may, as nothing else can, stir the feelings of those who hear, 

I 



and they can excite to instant action. But the most im- 
pressive memorials of great and noble character and achieve- 
ment are those visible expressions wrought in diirable stone 
or metal which continually, as the years go by, make their 
unceasing appeal to the eye of every beholder. The Pyra- 
mid of Cheops and the Washington Monument continually 
proclaim a sublime message that spoken words cannot 
express, and thus make their appeal to the more spiritual 
side of our nature. 

That which we here honor and commend in the lives of 
those of our brethren who have made the supreme sacrifice 
in the great war is distinctly spiritual, and therefore eternal. 
Nothing great or good in this world is achieved without 
self-sacrifice, without the obliteration of self in order that 
the worthy object may be obtained. This is in accordance 
with the divine law of operation exemplified in the life and 
the death of the Christ. The life of each one of us began 
when under the divine ordination our mothers, in order 
that we might have life, cheerfully went down into the very 
entrance of the Valley of the Shadow. We admire with all 
our hearts the bravery and sublime courage of all the men 
who in response to their country's selection and call went to 
war against the forces attacking the very fundamentals of 
civilization. But let us remember that mere bravery in the 
face of danger is not the thing we most honor in these men. 

The leader of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, in the early 
dawn of history, was Agamemnon, and a worthy warrior 
leader was he. Of him another Greek warrior, Achilles, well 
said in a quarrel, "There were brave men before Agamem- 
non. " With the light of history we can truthfully say that 
there have been brave men in every generation since the 
time of Agamemnon; but where in all the pages of history 
is it recorded that men went to battle with such sublime and 
devoted self-sacrificing courage or with such high purpose 
for mankind as did the men we here honor? Against this 



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spirit not all the trained and scientific savagery of the Hun 
could prevail. 

The Secretary of War, Mr. Baker, speaking at the Vic- 
tory Dinner of the Associate Alumni of the College of the 
City of New York, paid a tribute to the college men in the 
war. He said that the value of the college spirit and edu- 
cation had been shown, that the men knew what they were 
fighting about, they knew how to fight, they fought fair, 
and they came back to contribute to the country their 
studious acquirements, with which they would enrich civi- 
lization. He told of his apprehension that the war would 
break the American academic traditions, and how this 
proved to be entirely unwarranted. He then described the 
work at the American Expeditionary Force University at 
Beaune, where there are eleven complete colleges and nine 
thousand men; where the doughboy is professor to majors 
and colonels and where the spirit of democratic idealism is 
dominant. 

It has been said in certain quarters that President Wil- 
son's actions in regard to the war and its conclusion are too 
* ' academic " and too "idealistic, " which means too spiritual, 
for this practical world. For what, pray, does an institution 
such as the University of Mississippi exist if not to bless the 
world with the embodiment of things that are academic and 
idealistic and spiritual in the highest and best sense ? 

In the supreme sacrifice which has glorified these youths 
who sleep their last sleep in Flanders fields, or elsewhere 
over there, their friends and families have an enduring 
share. In yielding up their loved ones, these have made 
sacrifice of the same hallowed and sacred quality as theirs 
who no longer walk the earth. As long as these walls shall 
endure, this memorial shall bear witness for all these soldier 
patriots and their families to the fruitful blessedness of lives 
lived and given that civilization be not overwhelmed, and 
that the world be made a better place to live in. This ven- 

3 



erable University can teach no more important lesson to 
the youth that shall frequent these halls than that which 
comes from the contemplation of this memorial. 

The world will ever have, as it has always had, calls for 
courageous endeavor for the right, and against the wrong, — 
calls for those ready to make every and even the supreme 
sacrifice, in places, it may be, less conspicuous but not there- 
fore less important. For us, then, comes from those who 
have made the supreme sacrifice for duty and the good of 
the world this clarion call for consecration to duty voiced 
by Dr. John McCrae, the Canadian surgeon who made his 
supreme sacrifice while serving the wounded. 

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row. 
That mark our place; and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

"We are the Dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie, 
In Flanders fields. 

"Take up our quarrel with the foe; 
To you from failing hands we throw 
The torch; — be yours to hold it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, tho poppies grow 
In Flanders fields." 

The University makes no stronger call to the sacredness 
of duty than the quiet teaching of this memorial with its 
message from those who lie in Flanders fields. 

May this teaching and its influence never fail ! 

My friends of the Class of '6q: 

Our association is too intimate to find expression in pub- 
lic. The kind thoughtfulness of Chancellor Powers has so 

4 



arranged that we are thrown together where we can hold 
close intercourse and indulge in continual reminiscence over 
the half century that has rolled by since we were as the 
boys who now fill these halls. We have forgotten most of 
the Latin, Greek, mathematics, and science that composed 
our daily mental pabulum. Since all students forget most 
of what they learn, what is the use of learning things ? My 
experience and observation lead me to conclude that we 
grow mentally on a certain spiritual element or quality in 
education, which makes us stronger when it is taken over 
from our work. Perhaps I will be understood when I say 
that the essence of education, that which invigorates and 
makes us mentally grow, lies in the consciousness of successful 
effort. The conscious mastery of a lesson in language in 
mathematics or science gives the mental stimulus and vigor 
that means growth. This effect abides with us as long as 
we continue to make mental effort. Each task consciously 
well performed better fits us for the following tasks, no 
matter how soon the facts learned and the knowledge in- 
volved are forgotten after they have served their purpose. 

I trust that our undergraduate friends will keep these 
points in mind in passing judgment on us older folk, and if 
tempted to regard us as old fogies will remember that we 
have long ago learned and forgotten many of the things 
which they are now learning. 

The sober import to us of this great occasion can not 
better be expressed than by quoting from the classic poem 
which Henry W. Longfellow read at the semicentennial 
celebration of his class at Bowdoin College in 1875. It was 
entitled Morituri Salutamus, beginning with the lines : 



"*0 Caesar, we who are about to die 
Salute you ' was the gladiator's cry 
In the arena standing face to face 
With death and with the Roman populace. " 



And again, after greeting his audience, 

"... the teachers who in earlier days 
Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze 
They answer us — Alas, what have I said? 
What greetings come there from the voiceless dead? 
They are no longer here. They are all gone 
Into the land of Shadows, — all save one. 
Honor and reverence and the good repute 
That follows faithful service as its fruit 
Be unto him, whom living we salute. " 

Are we down-hearted ? 

"... nothing is too late 
Till the tired heart has ceased to palpitate, 
Cato learned Greek at eighty ; Sophocles 
Wrote his grand CEdipus, and Simonides 
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers 
When each had numbered more than fourscore years. " 

So in cheerful courage we shall "carry on" until the last 
stroke of the closing hour. We greet our Alma Mater with 
joy for every indication of prosperity and wholesome growth. 
Commencing its work in the first decade after the removal of 
the Chickasaw Indians from this region, it had the experi- 
ence of crude beginnings common to all the colleges founded 
in the early settlement of the newer states, but it had the 
backing of men of vision, and the support, though finan- 
cially too meager, of a public that was sure it knew a uni- 
versity when it saw one and that it was a paying investment 
for any community. This was the initiative period when 
college-founding was one of the chief public interests in 
every new State; when in one western State, scarcely yet 
organized, it was a boast that they already had "six colleges 
completely built and the logs cut for another." 

I have recently read a history of the beginnings of the 
State University in a certain western state, where every 

6 



citizen wanted to have a hand in the management of the 
" Peoples' University. " Each parent wanted his son to have 
a special course laid out according to the boy's capacity, 
and for the boy to be graduated without fail and quickly, 
whether the work had been done or not. Where all citizens 
in the community wanted to know why the faculty did not 
make the boys behave in a quiet way, and when any punish- 
ment was visited on an offender the community outside the 
University was ready and active in using every legal or 
other device to secure immunity for the offender. 

How natural all this seems to those who have had ex- 
perience in trying to make a college succeed. Fortunate is 
that administrator who can steer between the Scylla and 
Charybdis which beset his way. When, in addition, selfish 
political plans or ambitions beset the institution, the only 
course left to the administrator, apparently, is to do as the 
captain of the ship did in St. Paul's shipwreck, — ''Loose 
the rudder bands, hoist up the main sail to the wind, and 
make toward the shore" and shallow water, for shipwreck 
is inevitable. No honorable or great achievement under 
such conditions is possible. As in this case cited there may 
be no loss of any man's life, specially if he is able to swim or 
to secure a piece of floating wreckage, but disastrous loss of 
the ship and failure of its high mission. 

In the course of time doubtless some of you, my brethren 
of the Alimini, will be called to membership in the Board 
which directs the affairs of the University and which the 
undergraduate student is apt to consider the highest on 
earth, and the wisest. The Board has not always considered 
itself to be so, for I have known it quietly to take counsel 
and seek knowledge of student bodies or graduating classes 
— probably with the idea that these latter are in a case 
analogous to that of the ''ultimate consumer" and therefore 
able to know what is the matter. Well do I recall that one 
class just graduating, in consultation over the affairs of the 

7 



University, unanimously came to the conclusion that the 
Christmas holidays should be abolished as being unneces- 
sary and a waste of time and money. This recommendation 
was adopted by the Board in June and worked quietly 
until Christmas came around, with the usual flood of re- 
quests to the Chancellor from parents and students for 
permission to be allowed to go home, each a little earlier 
than the expected time. The Chancellor replied that he 
could give permits to go home on parents' requests, but 
that under the rule adopted by the Board he would not be 
able to readmit such students after Christmas. This was 
the law. But immediately after Christmas came a flood of 
letters from parents, influential friends, and members of the 
Board insisting that the boys be taken back, — and they were 
taken back. I can have some appreciation of the feelings 
which that honored Chancellor carried to his grave. This 
occurred nearly twoscore years ago. All of us have learned 
many things in the school of experience within that time. 

The desire to serve the University on the Board of Trus- 
tees is a worthy and laudable ambition for any alumnus, and 
I trust that in the future many of our brethren will be found 
thus serving. Like every good work it calls for thought and 
the exercise of good judgment such as only comes when a 
careful study of the problems involved is made a matter of 
duty and hard work. One of the g'reat problems to be ad- 
justed in the near future is the one relating to the proper 
compensation of the members of the faculty. These are 
men who have spent years of time and thousands of dollars 
in preparation for their honorable and noble work, and 
whose very devotion to it in a way unfits them to take up 
any other. Only in a few of the older universities of the 
country have I noted any effort to secure funds needed to 
give the professors what would be called a living wage in this 
day. The whole body of teachers in America is pitifully 
underpaid, and none more so than college administrators 

8 



and professors whose family expenses are, by outside cir- 
cumstances which they cannot control, compelled to be 
higher than they can conveniently meet. 

Ideal would be the work of a governing board that could 
place well-balanced responsibility and authority in the 
hands of its chief administrator and pay such salaries to 
professors as would relieve them from the dread of possible 
displacement without shelter. 

With such a reign of justice most of the causes of friction 
in colleges would be removed and all would move smoothly 
toward the goal of high achievement. 



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